Dixville Notch and Hart's Location, two tiny villages, were poised to be the nation's first to cast _ and report _ Election Day votes for president.
With 115 residents between them, Dixville Notch and Hart's Location's get every eligible voter to the polls beginning at midnight on Election Day. Between them, the towns have been enjoying their first-vote status since 1948.
Being first means something to residents of the Granite State, home of the nation's earliest presidential primary and the central focus _ however briefly _ of the vote-watching nation's attention every four years.
"It's just because we can," said Ed Butler, a Democratic state representative who runs the Notchland Inn in Hart's Location. "Being this small and being able to be first just makes it that much more special."
Hart's Location started opening its polls early in 1948, the year President Harry S. Truman beat Thomas Dewey, to accommodate its resident railroad workers who had to get to work early. Hart's Location got out of the early voting business in 1964 after some residents grew weary of all of the publicity but brought it back in 1996.
